1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to cookie management in Web communications.
2. Description of Related Art
A cookie is a small text file stored by a Web browser on a user's computer. A cookie may contain information that identifies each user, such as user names and passwords. When a user revisits a Web site, the Web server may establish the user's identity by the cookie.
FIG. 1 illustrates a currently existing network environment in which a cookie management system may be employed. As shown, the system includes a number of Web servers, 101-1, 101-2, . . . 101-n, communicating with a number of user terminals, 102-1, 102-2, . . . 102-n, over the Internet 103. A user may want to visit his homepage on a Web site run by a Web server 101-n. The user may sign in from the login screen of the Web site. When redirecting the user from the login screen to his homepage, the Web server 101-n may send to a Web browser in the user terminal 102-n, along with everything else for the user's homepage, a header “set cookie: login=1.” The Web browser may store the cookie on the user terminal 102-n. If the user is interested in an article on his homepage, he may click on the link for the article, and the Web browser may send to the Web server 101-na request for the article, together with the cookie “login=1”. The Web server 101-n may identify the user by the cookie and realize that he already signed in, and not ask him to sign in again.
Cookies have finite limits defined by Web browsers, both on the number of cookies being used and the overall cookie size. When these limits are exceeded, Web browsers start deleting data stored in cookies. Different Web browsers have different limits on cookies, and follow different rules to determine which data to delete. A user's browsing experience may be affected when important data, e.g., login information, is deleted.
Therefore, it may be desirable to provide a system and method which allows Web applications to determine which data should be deleted from cookies to ensure that the most important data always remains safe.